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How to live after a cancer diagnosis
There are a number of three-word sentences in the English language that, although short phrases, they have a large potential for greatly impacting one’s life. Phrases that immediately come to mind are, “I love you,” “Let’s get married,” “I got hired (or fired)!”, and “You’ve Got Mail.” However, one that has maybe even a bigger impact on people’s lives — and maybe even a longer lasting affect than some people’s marriages or jobs — is this one: “You’ve got cancer.” I personally have heard (and/or said) all of the above phrases, and just a little over two years ago I got to hear the last one after I awoke from emergency surgery to remove a blockage in my small intestine.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t hit me like a cow’s kick to the chest — which is exactly the way it felt when we got the news six years ago that mom had stage 4 pancreatic cancer — but it felt more like resignation: “Yeah, it figures. Didn’t I predict I’d be the next in line for this?” Actually I did say it in 2014 when my mom, dad and a favorite uncle all were diagnosed (and the men are still with us). I told the man I was dating at the time, “I feel like, ‘who’s next? Me, because I’m the oldest in the family?” He told me not to think like that but as it turned out, I was right (either that or I “spoke it into existence,” as another friend told me his grandma always said). Though people do generally like it when they…
